Amazing that Wells and his wife find themselves in this position after all the years they've practised law and acquired assets. Seems like receivership could have been avoided but they pussyfooted around probably believing that the claimant would go away but didn't. Wells misjudged his opponent and now will pay a steep price for it, perhaps to the extent of not being able to practice law until the debt is paid off. What a fall from grace.

Miller is part of the problem not part of the solution. His good friend and former Works Minister Brave Davis was the person in the PLP government who spearheaded bringing Powrt Secure to these islands to take over the management and operations of BEC for $900,000 per month. We were given to understand that Power Secure had all the answers and would come in with the manpower, expertise, money and capability to rectify and solve all of the problems with our power systems and with the operation of BEC, so much so that despite protests by Miller decrying the need to bring in this foreign company to run our electricity system, his colleagues had so much confidence in him and the job that he had done that they didn't leave him on the Board of BEC but shipped him off to Water & Sewerage Corporation. By the way, notice the difference in the PLP's attitude: we can't have foreigners running/managing/owing our communications systems but it's okay to turn over the reins of our national power grid to a bunch of foreigners with a new wind from the Carolinas. Miller and his PLP cohorts could have done much more to promote solar energy and the use of new technology. But their mindset was to keep BEC big and bloated and then at the 11th hour before the election float the idea of free electricity for certain unspecified categories of users. The old saying that there's no free lunch applied to that idea as the question like with NHI is how and who is going to pay for it. They were already killing the middle class in this country by coming down hard on tax collection while giving free passes and waivers to their friends and supporters. Miller did a lot of talking but despite all of his talking we never saw any real results at BEC or Water & Sewerage.

The government needs to be very careful on how it negotiates or gives away expiring or expired concessions in Freeport without ensuring that it obtains the best possible terms for the governance of Freeport and the rest of Grand Bahama. Although the Communications Act and the Electricity Act are national pieces of legislation that apply to any service provider in those industries in any part of the Bahamas, you have Cable Bahamas and Grand Bahama Power who take the position that they are not subject to these laws and refuse to pay the government and the regulator millions of dollars in licensing and regulatory fees. Then to add insult to injury, these companies and their lawyers want to tout the Grand Bahama Port Authority as being some sort of regulatory body in Freeport. If journalists and others actually read the Hawksbill Creek Agreement they would see that the Port Authority is only a licensing agency for doing business in Freeport and selling land in Freeport. As far as servicing East and West Grand Bahama with electricity, the Power Company claims to have entered into agreements with the Ingraham administration to provide electricity in Grand Bahama besides Freeport that extends the benefits of the HCA to these additional communities. Amazingly Grand Bahama is the only island in the Bahamas that has no regulator to protect communications and electricity consumers. It is unseemly for the government to allow this situation to continue especially when it has enacted laws to protect these consumers but is being prevented from doing so by two companies hell-bent on inflating their profits at the expense of poor Bahamians.

I agree with Porcupine that the government should nationalize the web shop gambling business so that the majority of the financial benefits accrue to the country and not to a few people who flaunted the criminal and gaming laws of this country to their personal benefit. If the government is going to continue to tax them, then the tax collected should be in the 75-80% margin and not whatever it is now. The operators should be allowed to keep a profit of not more than 5% of their income after payment of expenses including salaries, rent, payouts, etc. The current system is ridiculous and only benefits the owners and no one else.

Somehow, some way, our Customs and Immigration services are failing us as well as the Customs and Alcohol/Tobacco/Firearms services of the US government. How is it that these guns are finding their way out of the USA into the Bahamas and none of these governmental agencies on either side seems able or interested in doing something about it? I'm sure if Bahamians were exporting guns and ammunition into the USA there would have been multiple extraditions and allegations of the Bahamas supporting or failing to prevent terrorism. However, as the flow is in the opposite direction and Bahamians must be spending money in the USA to buy these guns, are we to believe that the Americans are happy for the revenues? The Bahamian government mustvbecome much more aggressive about the prosecution and sentencing of persons found with unlicensed firearms and ammunition, particularly assault weapons like an AK-47. We should not succumb to the stupid argument of licensing businessmen and others to possess handguns and other weapons. We don't need more persons on the street with guns, licensed or otherwise. We should strive for zero tolerance on the possession of firearms. Guns are designed for one purpose: to kill and to severely injure, and either we are going to get serious about taking them off our streets or we should get out of the game. If a magistrate believes that a case involving a gun demands a greater sentence than he or she can impose, they they should remit the matter to a Supreme Court judge for sentencing as permitted by the Criminal Procedure Code.

Gibson got all that he was entitled to when he signed on to the FNM. No one other than the Prime Minister has an entitlement to a Cabinet seat. If and when Gibson distinguishes himself as a back bencher, maybe he will get a Cabinet appointment but until then his principal responsibility as an MP is to represent his constituents to the best of his ability and demonstrate to Dr Minnis why it might have been a mistake to have left him out of the Cabinet. Gibson has to show the world that he's a team player and not all about himself. He must remember that there is no "i" in team.

We have never had a coherent work permits policy that was tied to any long term objectives regarding the education, hiring and employment of Bahamians. The mantra during the times of Pindling's governments was "Bahamas for Bahamians" but whenever the banks, hotels, insurance companies and other businesses with offshore affiliations required "their" people in senior or specialist positions, they got the work permits they needed through either through genuine need, political clout or false advertising overstating the qualifications required for the job. However, nowhere in government policy, whether PLP or FNM, has there been a hard and fast rule that the permit is granted for a specified period of time (say 3, 5 or maximum 10 years) or a measurable requirement that both the employer and the permit holder mentor and upskill the permit holder's Bahamian understudies so that when the permit expired one or more of the understudies was sufficiently skilled and knowledgable to take over the position. One reason the British are getting out of the European Union is because of the free flow of labour and the perception that they are being unindated with Eastern Europeans who come for the jobs and other social benefits. One reason the Bahamas has never gone whole hog into caricom membership is because of the fear of being unindated with employees from West Indian countries who would take jobs away from Bahamians. If you check most job advertisements for skilled positions in the papers, the employer many times wants someone with specialised qualifications and years of experience, sometimes experience gained outside the Bahamas. The average college grad may have the paper qualifications but not the job related experience so they are excluded from applying before they have even begun. My recent advice to my son-in-law on graduating from college in Canada was to stay there and gain work experience because Bahamian employers now seem to want their skilled Bahamian workers to have some foreign job experience. The Bahamas does not do surveys to determine what types of jobs and qualifications are trending now and what types of jobs and qualifications are employers likely to require within the next 3-5-10 year cycle to assist with planning and training. So we stumble along doing things the same old way and making the same old promise of "Bahamas for Bahamians" but with no plan or information as to what types of skills should we be concentrating on. How many work permit holders do we have in the Bahamas, in what areas and what are their skills and expertise? To paraphrase someone else's question, do employers really need to import Costa Ricans and Chileans to be maids and housekeepers?

The divestment of state owned enterprises (SOEs) to private ownership cures one problem but also potentially creates others. The fascination for the new owners is profits and efficiency, often leading to costlier goods/services to cover profits and decreases in employees and benefits to employees to keep costs down. As one writer has noted above, poor management, poor business practices, lack of accountability and hiring of employees for political rather than business reasons has seriously hampered most if not all SOEs. Classic case in point is something as simple as the annual audit. All of these SOES are created by statute and require their governing legislation requires that each of them conduct (and publish) an annual audit. Last I checked, Water & Sewerage was about 5 years behind, ZNS/Broadcasting Corporation was about 8 years behind and had given up on some years, while other SOES say "where you put me"? The legislation governing the appointment of the board members of these SOEs and their management needs serious modernising. There is no need for any of them to have an Executive Chairperson; what expertise is this person bringing to the table that management does not already have available? And none of the board nor management are penalised for failures like not conducting annual audits although it is a breach of the governing legislation, much like the failure to submit annual public disclosure declarations. If we sell off these SOES we will need antitrust or fair trade legislation to protect consumers from unscrupulous companies. Whatever is done, the current subsidisation of many of these SOEs cannot continue without drastic changes in the way the Bahamas does business. Other areas in need of reconsideration are the way the salary increases of unionised employees (needs to be performance based rather than lump sum) and the pension system (defined benefits vs defined contribution).

Now that the government has changed, you and everyone else in the same situation need to write to the Prime Minister, Minister of Labour, Minister of Immigration, your local embassy or high commission in the Bahamas and anyone else with influence to bring this discriminatory and biased nonsense to an end. If all else fails, you might have to try find an attorney who will pursue the matter for you on a contingency fee basis. I am sure that if the shoe was on the other foot and it was a group of Bahamians who had worked in a foreign country but not been paid, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have been pursuing it through official channels on their behalf.

When a party gets voted out of government, the good and the indifferent invariably get swept out with the bad. I will not miss any of these people. They were too caught up in covering up for one another without primary regard for the interests of the people who put them there. Fred and Allyson and Jerome and Brave telling us that anyone challenging news and statements emanating from the government was wrong, an idiot, didn't know what they were talking about, trying to undermine the government and on and on. But it was okay to give us half truths, slanted information, any and everything to make the government appear as if it could and was doing no wrong and everyone else has some grudge, is misinformed or just plain stupid. The final final straw for me was Jerome reading people's private emails from the floor of the house while trying to attribute them as destabilizing the government. When the Data Protection Commissioner pointed out that the only reason she could not take action against him was because it was done in Parliament, the PLPs answer was to fire her. When Jerome was fined by the Supreme Court for his actions regarding these emails, their answer was twofold, that the court had no jurisdiction over Parliament and then to conduct an investigation into the personal lives of the judge and her family. Those in the PLP who stood by and said or did nothing are as bad as the perpetrator.